BuzBerry, a blog run by a group of young Kuwaitis are trying to encourage people to read. To accomplish that they’ve set up a competition in which to enter you need to read and review one of the following four books:

Found this book called “Butt Book” at a supermarket and thought it was pretty funny. So I picked up the book and flipped through it, turns out there is a gay magazine called Butt Magazine and this book was a collection of the “best” stuff. Not very pretty…

Bazaar Magazine have a new website (finally no more hotmail emails) which you can access by going to bazaar-magazine.com. Sadly the WHOLE site is flash based which is a disaster. Who still does a fully flashed based website nowadays yet alone a magazine?

As K.thekuwaiti put it, Flash is dead. Bazaar should have done a proper online magazine which would archive all their articles so they could at least be search able. They need to start building a database of all their previous issues and their current ones because old fashioned print magazines are quickly becoming extinct. Digital is the future and a perfect example of an excellent magazines online presence is WIRED.

Finally, where is the Bazaar blog? Majority of companies and corporations are adding blogs to their website so its surprising to see that a popular, young and trendy publication like Bazaar still hasn’t jumped on board the blogging wagon knowing for a fact that the editor of the magazine and majority of their writers read blogs themselves.

Currently the website barely has anything to make it worthy of a second visit. Unless they revamp it I don’t think I would ever bother checking it again. [Link]

I have posted about Campaign ME numerous times before since its my favorite regional advertising publication. Last week the Campaign ME advertising awards got canceled and no explanation was given which sucked since my agency was tipped as being “Creative Agency of the Year”. Rumors then started flying around that the publication was going to close down and it seems the rumors are true.

I just read an article on mediaME which shed more light into this story. It seems Haymarket, a UK based firm that holds the license for Campaign ME, has pulled the license from IITP the current publishing house of Campaign ME.

Seems the local magazine Student-Talk doesn’t think too highly of us bloggers. K.TheKuwaiti has a couple of interesting posts regarding Student-Talk including the emails they sent him in reply to his original post. After reading their emails it kinda makes me appreciate Bazaar just a bit more.

If you can’t wait till the movie 300 gets released next year then you could buy the comic to keep you occupied till then. How close is the comic to the movie? I took two pictures from the comic and two screen shots from the movie trailer and you can see for yourself below.

If you are interested you can buy the hardcover version of the comic for only $18 from Amazon.com [Link]

My favorite publisher is Phaidon, their books are of extremely high standard and their design and typography is unmatched. I just found out they are publishing the Wallpaper* City Guides and I really want to have the full collection. Sadly the first guide I want is for Montreal but that comes out October 2007 so the first city guide I will have to get is Amsterdam. One guide sells for $8.95 but you can buy the first set of 20 for $143 which isn’t bad at all. [Link]

When I was in high school the scariest word to me was maba7es. Ten years later and the scariest word to me is still maba7es. I just sent in my article to KTM magazine yesterday and a few minutes ago I get a phone call from them telling me that my article is illegal and if they go ahead and print it I might get a visit from the maba7es. They wanted to know if I was OK with the risk. I told them I would think about it and give them a call back tomorrow with my answer. A very nice start to my journalistic career.

KTM magazine is looking for outspoken individuals of diverse backgrounds and differing opinions to write articles for the Kuwaiti community. You may be based in kuwait or outside of kuwait. Being already established here in Kuwait we intend to expand regionally through-out the Middle East. Among all the Arab world Kuwaiti media has been rated top in freedom of expression. We at KTM would like to see how far the envelope can be pressed as far as opinionated writing. Writers fee starts from $100. If this interests you please contact editor@ktm-mag.com